On the Development of Implicit Racial Bias: Measurement Variation and Empirical Inconsistencies

Intergroup racial bias refers generally to the systematic tendency to evaluate one racial group more favorably than another (Hewstone, Rubin,& Willis, 2002). Despite a steep decline in explicitly expressed racial bias over the last several decades (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000), people continue to hold negative attitudes toward racial minorities at an implicit level (Dovidio, 2001), and produce discriminatory acts in a more subtle form (Omi & Winant 1994). In the view of this problem, developmental researchers set out to investigate the origins and development of implicit racial bias, seeking to understand how children’s racial attitudes link with those observed in adults. The current developmental literature demonstrates variation in measurement strategies for implicit racial bias, and evidence for the construct validity of these child-friendly implicit measures is inadequate. The existing literature is also mixed as to whether or not implicit racial bias is developmentally invariant. This paper reviews four types of implicit racial bias measures that have been commonly used in the child population, catalogues their methodological differences, assesses their convergent and discriminant validities, and analyzes contradictory findings in studies using these measures.